It took a while, in the relative scope of technological growth, which as we all know increases exponentially, can I get a singularity shout out, the Internet took a little bit of time to find its way. In that time the Internet roved around chasing its own tail and occasionally distributing electronic mail form. And that's when the Internet found its true calling, a calling that involved distributing cute photos of the very animal that it emulates, a little kitten chasing shadows.
It took science a bit longer to find its groove. It wasted away for a while trying to figure out how to reanimate corpses, delved into creating mass amounts of corpses, and eventually tried to find a niche as a replacement for the seemingly outdated notion of religion, though this was decidedly undercut in much the same way that many people perceived religion to be undercut, by the whole making of corpses enterprise that still goes on.
The weird thing is that science got its groove back somewhere around 1960, but it needed the Internet to grow up and become omnipresent to reveal its true self. And now we have what science was created for. Youtube videos of kids trying to resist marshmallows.
Katie Baker from the wonderful folks over at Grantland describes it thusly:
Two years ago Jonah Lehrer wrote one of my favorite New Yorker pieces, about a psychological study conducted at Stanford in the '60s that examined children’s' willingness and ability to delay gratification. Overseen by Walter Mischel, the project evolved into a 40-year longitudinal study of its participants and gave rise to some compelling, if controversial, theories of human behavior. More importantly, it yielded a delightful YouTube genre: the Marshmallow Test.
Mischel's original Marshmallow Test is brilliant in its simplicity: A child of about 4 is plunked down at a table and presented with a plump, fluffy marshmallow. "You can eat this marshmallow now," a researcher tells the small, wide-eyed soul. "But if you wait until I get back in 10 minutes, then I'll give you another, and then you'll have two!" The door closes, and we're left with nothing but a marshmallow, a kid, and a camera.
i can see this expand to...
ReplyDeletemcdonalds cheese burgers, french fries temptation, or perhaps a shake??
then we could use adults with..
chocolate bar, cold beer, ice cream??
where is the kitty chasing its shadow??
so we cancel NASA but develop scientific
studies for you tube?
perhaps indecision is a decision in
itself!!
The Marshmellow Test is actually well known in the world of Child Development.
ReplyDeleteSelf-Regulation is a biological phenomenon – how hard a child has to work to deal with all the stresses in their life – the harder a child works, the less resources they have to learn.
Self Control (which the Marshmellow test is addressing) is a learned behavior – the better a child can self-regulate, the better a child can learn these skills.
What are the necessary components of being able to have self-control? Being able to perceive patterns, understanding non-verbal cues, understanding language, and being able to solve problems methodically...things many adults still struggle with every day...